


Self-Possession

by osprey_archer



Series: Reciprocity [12]
Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Bathing/Washing, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-01-20
Updated: 2015-01-20
Packaged: 2018-03-08 07:54:08
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,990
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3201404
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/osprey_archer/pseuds/osprey_archer
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <i>“I’ve been meaning to fix out one of the rooms for Russki Business, too, but I haven’t gotten around to it. Is he with you?” The StarkPhone turned from side to side, scanning the car, then hovered over to peer at Bucky. “Hello, murdroyshka doll.” </i>
</p>
<p>
  <i>Bucky scowled. “Little Orphant Anthony.”</i>
</p>
<p>Steve and Bucky visit New York.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Self-Possession

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you to littlerhymes for betaing this!

Steve didn’t really expect to find Bucky in Central Park. It was, after all, a big park in a big city, and on days that weren’t forty-one degrees and pouring rain, it was usually busy. 

But the frigid rain deterred all but the most determined joggers – and Steve, although he hated the feeling of the cold rain. His coat and boots were waterproof, but the rain wormed under his collar and over the top of the boots. Water was like that: it snuck in everywhere. His face was getting numb.

He thought, not for the first time, about giving up. Bucky would mosey back to the Bus on his own, and he might very well not have come to Central Park at all, even if he had been talking about visiting ever since the Bus landed near New York last night. 

But Steve didn’t want to leave New York without taking Bucky to Stark Tower. For years Tony had been pestering Steve to come see the apartment Tony built for him, and it had occurred to Steve that the place might be an escape. If they needed one. If things went wrong with SHIELD. 

Steve hadn’t spent much time in Central Park as a child – not like the Barnes’s, who had seemed, to Steve’s jealous young eyes, to go to Central Park at every opportunity. If they planned the trip ahead sometimes Bucky got to invite Steve along (and sometimes, if Steve had the fare, he could even go), but most of the time they seemed to go on a whim. They woke up on a sunny Saturday, slapped together some sandwiches from last night’s meatloaf, and dashed off to the park. The joys of the comparatively rich. 

But Steve had spent enough time here enough to recognize the lakes, the bridges, the contours of the hills. It had changed; but it hadn’t changed as much as the rest of New York. On sunny days, this pleased Steve; now, in the rain, it made him feel obscurely sad. As if the park had frozen, just like he had. 

He rounded a bend on the winding path, and there was Bucky, sitting on a bench. Steve knew the distinctive twist to his shoulders. 

Steve stopped a few feet from the bench. “Bucky,” he said.

Bucky didn’t lift his head. His hair hung around his face, water dripping off the ends into his lap. Steve hoped to God he hadn’t gone elsewhere in his head and left his body here to freeze. “Bucky,” he said, a little louder. 

“Steve.” Bucky sounded hoarse. 

“Buck,” Steve said. “Let’s go to a café or something. You must be freezing.”

Bucky shook his head. 

Steve wanted to press the point. If Bucky had been sitting there for any length of time, then freezing was a literal rather than metaphorical concern; and Steve himself was miserably cold. 

On the other hand, the cold wasn’t dangerous for Bucky the way that it would be for a normal human. If Steve got insistent about going inside, Bucky would grab onto it like a terrier with a bone and not let it go until he’d worn Steve out, and that way he would never have to talk about the way he’d picked Mack up by his shoulders and slammed him against the wall of the plane during breakfast. 

It all happened so fast. Steve and Bucky and Simmons were eating cereal and discussing Manhattan, and then Mack walked in, started laughing at something Fitz said, tripped over a tangle of extension cords on the floor, and knocked into the back of Bucky’s chair…

And then Bucky slammed him up against the wall with an arm across his throat. Just for a second, and then Bucky dropped him, grabbed a box of Lucky Charms, and left. 

Steve stayed to make sure Mack was okay, which he was. Shaken up, maybe a little bruised, but once he’d calmed down he was mostly concerned about Bucky. It embarrassed Steve terribly, because Bucky wouldn’t be nearly as concerned about Mack. But Mack was like that: off the field, he was one of the gentlest people Steve had ever met. 

And Bucky knew that: he would curl up on the couch beside Mack and sleep while Mack played video games. But he couldn’t bear to be touched by surprise, especially not by men and especially not by men who were larger than him; and there was no way to avoid that kind of accident on a plane, even one as spacious as the Bus. They’d been on it for less than three months, and this was the third incident already. 

By the time Steve went after him, Bucky had already left the plane. Probably he figured Coulson would cancel his leave otherwise. 

The rain poured down. It reminded Steve of the Valkyrie, of cold sea spray pounding through the open windows as the plane slowly sank. The spray had been so sharply cold that he couldn’t tell water from broken glass. “You want to go to Brooklyn?” Steve asked. Anything to get somewhere warm. 

But Bucky shook his head. “I’ve been.”

“Really? When?” There hadn’t been time that morning.

“After the helicarriers.” 

Of course. Steve should have remembered that from Bucky’s SHIELD interrogation: he’d given them a complete itinerary of his movements. 

“I wanted to see my mother,” said Bucky, and snorted. “Stupid, right?”

Steve’s throat closed up. He sat down next to Bucky on the wet park bench. He wanted to put an arm around him, to sympathize, but Bucky hated sympathy: accepting it would have meant admitting that he hurt. So Steve just said, “Your mom was pretty great.”

Bucky’s head drooped. “Yeah.” 

“Bucky. If you wanted. We could see your sisters – ” Steve began.

Bucky sat bolt upright. “No! I told you not to bring this up again!” 

“That was over two years ago,” Steve protested. “Don’t you want to see them?”

“No!”

“Why not?”

“Because I don’t!” 

“That’s not an answer,” Steve pointed out.

“If I give you a reason, you’ll just argue with it anyway,” Bucky snapped. He hunched down again, flesh arm tight against his chest. 

“It’s just that they’re getting older,” Steve said. “I don’t want you to realize that you wanted to see them after they’ve died.”

Bucky lifted his hand abruptly to shut him up. His face contorted, and he rubbed at his eyebrow, at the side of his nose: as close to his eyes as he could get without admitting he was close to tears. “They’d be safe then.”

“When they’re dead?”

“No one could hurt them. I don’t want to – get them involved in this – ” He clenched his hand in a fist and punched it against his thigh. “And they’ve had decades to get used to me being dead. It’s not fresh for them like it was for you. I’d… probably I’d just upset them.” 

“Bucky – ”

Bucky slapped the bench. “This is why I never explain myself to you! You always fucking argue!” Bucky yelled. “I don’t want to see them and I don’t want to argue about it, so just shut up!” 

Steve fell silent, staring off into the park. The wet path was the same dark gray as the clouds. He shivered. Why did Bucky have to sit in the cold like this? Why couldn’t he sulk somewhere warm, like a Starbucks? 

Bucky slipped his right hand out of his pocket. He took Steve’s hand, and Steve was startled and momentarily pleased; and then Bucky lifted Steve’s hand, moving it purposefully upward. 

Steve jerked his hand away. “Bucky,” he snapped. “Don’t do that. I _hate_ it when you move my hands like that.” 

Bucky grasped the edge of the bench with his empty hand. He didn’t lift his head. He looked woeful, sitting on the bench with his head bowed, the rain dripping off the ends of his hair, and for a moment remorse welled up in Steve. He wished he hadn’t pushed Bucky’s hands away.

He stomped on that thought. There were better ways to ask for things. Much better if he could help Bucky use them. 

“What did you want me to do?” Steve asked. 

Bucky’s fingers clenched and unclenched on the edge of the park bench. Then he lifted his hand, pushing his hair aside and briefly clasping his hand over the nape of his neck. Then he let his hand fall. It clenched on the wood again. 

“Like this?” Steve said, and fitted his hand around the back of Bucky’s neck, trying to cover as much skin as possible to warm him up a little. Bucky shivered, and Steve half-expected Bucky to change his mind and knock Steve’s hand away, but Bucky didn’t. He sat still, his wet hair slithering over Steve’s hand. A determined jogger staggered past, his face set in grim lines beneath his thinning gray hair.

Bucky let his head droop forward to give Steve better access. Steve leaned his forearm over Bucky’s back. The muscles were locked and tense: Steve could feel it despite all the fabric between them. He rubbed his thumb in the hollow behind Bucky’s ear, and Bucky drooped some more and let out an odd quivery sigh. “I ruined Mack’s day,” he muttered.

“You did not,” Steve said. “You made maybe ten minutes of it unpleasant.” He moved his hand to stroke Bucky’s hair, but Bucky jerked his shoulders a little in protest, so Steve let his hand lie still again, rubbing slowly behind Bucky’s ear. 

For the first time Bucky turned to face Steve. His cheeks were mottled, and his lips – maybe it was just the dimness of the day – his lips looked bluish. “Bucky – ” Steve said, concerned. He moved his hand from the back of Bucky’s neck, hoping to cup his cheek, but Bucky shied away sharply. 

“Bucky, we’ve got to go inside,” Steve urged. “Let’s go to Stark Tower. Tony’s working on some new wings for Sam and he’s dying to show them off.”

Steve hoped the wings would clinch it, but Bucky shook his head. His jaw jumped as he clenched his teeth to keep them from chattering. His hands tightened on the bench. The wood splintered under the left hand.

“He’d give us something to eat,” Steve pressed, tugging on Bucky’s arm. “We could toss your clothes in the dryer. Come on, Bucky. I’m cold. You’ve got to be freezing.” 

But Bucky kept shaking his head. “I killed his parents.” 

Steve didn’t let go of Bucky’s arm, but he stopped pulling. “Well,” he said. “Yes. But that wasn’t your fault.” 

“Like that _matters_.” Bucky’s teeth had begun to chatter. 

“Uh,” Steve said uncertainly. “I think it does, actually? Tony doesn’t blame you. I told him you’d be coming along if we found time to swing by, and he said that was fine.”

Bucky swiped rainwater off his face and didn’t respond. 

“Bucky,” Steve said firmly. “Come on.” He started to walk away, and hoped to God that Bucky would follow. 

Bucky’s boots squelched in the puddles as he followed. The rain had slowed down. Steve wasn’t sure it was raining at all: the drops fell so slowly that they might just be leftover rain falling from the sodden trees. They were cold and miserable on Steve’s face.

Bucky fell in step beside Steve. “It was my first mission for Hydra,” Bucky said. “Sasha wanted to see if I still worked.” Alexander Pierce. Oh, God. “After, you know. He burned everything out of my brain.”

“Yeah?” 

“Yeah. I think he was hoping I’d fail, actually. I was still drooling from the wipe when he sent me out.” He smirked suddenly. “All he wanted for Christmas was a mindless mind-wiped automaton. Never got over the disappointment when he got a Soviet assassin instead.” The smirk twisted up into a grin that bared his teeth. “Never got the blood spatter out of that American flag tie, either. Poor Sashenka. You’ve gotta feel sorry for him.” 

“I don’t,” Steve said quietly. 

Bucky flinched, just a little, and began to shiver so violently that he stopped walking. “I didn’t mean to tell you any of that,” he said.

Steve stopped, a few feet ahead of him. He was beginning to shiver himself. “Come on, Bucky. It’s okay – ”

“It’s not okay! I didn’t mean to tell you any of that!” Bucky said. 

Steve went back and put an arm around Bucky’s shoulder, just for a few seconds, the way Bucky used to do for him, back before the serum. “Bucky,” he said. “Let’s go inside. Let’s go to Stark Tower, Bucky, please, I’ll text Pepper and she can send someone to pick us up – ” 

“I don’t want – ”

“Bucky! Please. I’m fucking freezing, I hate this, it’s like being back on the Valkyrie – ” He cut himself off, embarrassed, and growing more embarrassed under Bucky’s silent thoughtful gaze. 

“Fine,” said Bucky. “All right.” 

Pepper did one better: she picked them up herself, driving a battered gray minivan. She wore a frizzy blonde wig and a pink sweatshirt emblazoned with kittens, and when she pulled up to the curb and drawled, “Hop on in, y’all,” Steve drew away from the car, because he didn’t recognize her. 

Then her mouth widened into her distinctive grin, and she pushed her thick-rimmed glasses down her nose to look at Steve. “Like the costume?” she asked, popping the sliding door in the side. “Natasha’s been giving me lessons. It’s nice to pick up a cappuccino without being mobbed by reporters.” 

Steve and Bucky bundled into the car. “The southern accent was a bit much,” Steve said. 

Pepper sighed. “Like Natasha says,” she said. “Less is more. But more is so much more _fun_.” 

For all that it looked rundown on the outside, inside the minivan was very Tony Stark: a console complicated enough to chart a moon voyage (and who knew? Maybe the thing actually could fly to the moon), a minibar, and plush heated seats. Bucky huddled down in his chair and stared out the tinted window as the minivan crawled through Manhattan traffic. He had mostly stopped shivering, but Steve thought that was an effort of will more than actual warmth: every few blocks he suddenly shook all over. 

“I’m afraid I’m not going to be able to give you a tour,” Pepper said. “I have to be at a shareholder meeting. But JARVIS can show you around.”

“That’s fine,” said Steve, relieved. He liked Pepper too much to want to inflict Bucky on her in this state. “That’s great, actually. I’m sorry to drop in on you unexpectedly like this.” 

“Oh, it’s no trouble. It’s good to keep them waiting.”

They stopped at yet another stoplight, and a panel on the console suddenly lit up with Tony’s face. He was sitting on a beach, wearing an unbuttoned white shirt and holding a complicated pink drink with two curly straws. “Have you picked him up yet?” Tony asked. 

Pepper glanced at him. (Trust Tony to design his vehicles for maximum road danger.) “Tony, you should put on something a little more formal. You have a shareholder meeting in fifteen minutes.”

“Cancel the meeting.”

“Tony – ”

“Cancel the meeting,” Tony told her. 

“I can’t cancel the meeting, Tony, we’ve been trying to set this up for six months and you already canceled the last one – ”

“Oh, sorry, I thought protecting New York was more important than schmoozing my shareholders – ”

“And they were extremely understanding about that,” Pepper said. “But there’s no emergency this time.”

“We can come up with something. Bruce could make one of my lab experiments go conveniently wrong if I asked. Put it on a time delay of, oh, half an hour, so I have time to fly back to New York? Steve, you should hear the sonic booms my new suit makes – ”

“ _Tony_.” 

“It’s been so long since Steve and I have fought together! And I want to see his face when he sees his apartment. Steve, you are going to visit your apartment in Stark Tower, right?” 

“Sure – ” Steve started, and got a little flustered when the StarkPhone lifted off its place on the dashboard and came to hover in front of him so he and Tony were face to face. “Uh, yeah, I guess.” 

Tony drank some of the cocktail out of one curly straw. “You look terrible,” he said. “Have you been sleeping?” 

“ _Tony_ ,” said Pepper. Steve wondered if he sounded like that when he tried to scold Bucky into behaving himself. 

“Because you’d be sleeping much better if you lived in my tower,” Tony said. “I’ve been meaning to fix out one of the rooms for Russki Business, too, but I haven’t gotten around to it. Is he with you?” The StarkPhone turned from side to side, scanning the car, then hovered over to peer at Bucky. “Hello, murdroyshka doll.” 

Bucky scowled. “Little Orphant Anthony.”

The words seemed to suck all the air out of the car. Steve snatched the StarkPhone out of the air and dragged it back over to him. Steve thought he should probably apologize for Bucky. But his temper rose, and he snapped, “If you want to dish it out you’ve gotta be able to take it, Tony.” 

There was a long pause. Tony stuck both straws in his mouth and sucked at his pink drink. 

“And that was a _terrible_ pun,” Steve added. 

“Really? Because I thought it was pretty good.” 

“It sucked.”

“Maybe you have to be a genius to see its true excellence.” 

“Tony!” said Pepper. She snapped her fingers, and the StarkPhone jumped out of Steve’s hands and back to its place on the console. “Tony, go put on a shirt that actually buttons. I don’t want you to attend the meeting as a floating holographic head this time.”

“Will floating holographic torso work for you? Because these swimming trunks are so comfortable.” 

“ _Fine_ ,” said Pepper. She sounded long-suffering, but even though Steve could only see a sliver of her face from the backseat, he could tell she was grinning. “If you’ll promise not to moon them this time.”

“That was ten years ago! I’m a reformed man!” Tony protested. “Gotta go, Stevie-O. You can tell me how much you love the apartment later. James Whitcomb Riley over there can decide on his own decorations.” 

“And the goblins’ll get you if you don’t watch out,” Bucky muttered. But Tony had already hung up. 

Bucky didn’t speak again until Pepper had packed them away on the elevator. “Captain Rogers, Agent Barnes,” said JARVIS, his soothing voice emanating from the walls. “Where to?”

Bucky sat, quite abruptly, on the elevator floor. 

“Buck?”

“I’m _fine_.” 

He should have warned Bucky about JARVIS. “That voice, that’s Tony’s…” There was no way to explain JARVIS that didn’t sound creepy. “Artificial intelligence computer butler,” Steve said. “Can you take us to my apartment, JARVIS?” 

The elevator didn’t even seem to be moving. But suddenly it made a little tinging sound, and the doors swooped open, and it must have been Steve’s apartment because the heroic mural of Steve from the Smithsonian hung on the lobby wall. 

Steve could only gape. “Fuck,” Bucky said, almost reverently, and he hauled himself to his feet and went over to peer at the picture. “Want me to paint a great big portrait of you in your cabin on the Bus?” he asked. “If it’d make you feel more at home.” 

“No, no. No,” Steve said, and Bucky smiled. 

“I probably couldn’t get your jaw that square anyway.” Bucky started to unbutton his coat, but his right hand was still trembling too hard to grasp the buttons. Steve made to help, but Bucky pushed his hand away and undid them himself with his metal hand. It never shook. 

“Maybe you should take a bath?” Steve suggested. “To warm you up.” 

“ _Fuck_ ,” said Bucky. “Fine.” 

“The bathroom is down the hall to the left,” JARVIS informed them helpfully. Bucky stood quite still for a moment, then flung his coat at the wall and stalked down the hall. One of his buttons left a nick on one of the stars on the mural. 

Steve picked up the wet coat and stood in the lobby, looking around the space. It was big enough that it made him feel small, which was no longer a familiar feeling. 

“The coat closet is to the left of the mural, sir,” JARVIS said. 

Steve twitched. “Thank you.” 

He hung up the coat and headed aimlessly into the apartment. He didn’t meant to follow Bucky – Bucky was perfectly capable of bathing himself, even if he mostly had to be bullied into it – but the steam billowing out of the open bathroom door drew him down the hall. 

“Buck, you should turn that down,” Steve said, sticking his head in. Bucky knelt by the massive bathtub, his hand stuck under one of five visible faucets to check the temperature. He drew his hand out of the water at the sound of Steve’s voice. His fingers looked red and raw. “Jesus, Bucky! Turn it down. You’re going to go into shock if you get in that.” 

“I’ll be fine.” He sounded annoyed. “I’ve done this before. They didn’t realize they shouldn’t put me in a steaming hot bath after I spent all night in the rain – this was before Sasha started sending Crossbones along all the time – and when I came to, they were all running around like chickens with their heads cut off ‘cause they thought they’d killed me.” 

“That… doesn’t sound fine at all. It sounds like it hurt you a lot,” said Steve. 

“Well, not lastingly. So it doesn’t count.” 

“Bucky – ” This was not an argument Bucky would let Steve win. “We have plenty of time,” Steve said instead. “So let’s do it properly, okay?”

JARVIS put in, “I can regulate the water temperature, sir.”

The water coming out of the tap stopped steaming. Bucky laid his face against the rim of the tub, eyes closed. “I want to get it over with,” he muttered. 

“I’ll put your clothes in the wash and they’ll be warm when you’re done,” Steve said. “And then we can… We could call a cab to take us to a pizza place or something.” 

Bucky scrunched his face up. Then he opened his eyes and looked up at Steve. “Anchovies?”

“On your pizza. If you must.” 

He tossed his own clothes in the wash with Bucky’s, and changed into some of the clothes Tony had put into what Steve could only assume was meant to be his bedroom – although who knew, maybe Tony had put looming Captain America cardboard cutouts in all the guest bedrooms, too. What was he supposed to do with all this space? The apartment was bigger than all Steve’s previous apartments combined. 

He wandered until he found an enormous gas fireplace in a room that was maybe a lounge. “Would you like me to light the fire, sir?” JARVIS asked. 

“Um.” The talking walls rattled him. At least the surveillance system on the Bus didn’t speak. “Sure, I guess,” Steve said. 

But the fire hadn’t been going very long when JARVIS said, “The dryer has finished, sir.” 

Of course Tony’s washer and dryer took half the time that any normal person’s would.

He folded Bucky’s clothes and wondered briefly if Tony had turned one of the guest bedrooms into a room for Bucky, and therefore stocked it with clothes newer and less battered than these. But Bucky was weirdly resistant to new clothes at the best of times, so Steve didn’t go looking, just knocked on the bathroom door. “You want me to leave your stuff outside the door for you?” he asked. 

“Nah, just bring them in.” 

Steve would have really preferred to leave them outside. But there was a little _click_ as JARVIS unlocked the bathroom door (and yes, that was super creepy), and he couldn’t think of a good reason to refuse, so he went inside with averted eyes. 

A handful of bubbles landed on his jeans. Steve looked up, startled, and saw that the bathtub was nearly overflowing with bubbles, covering Bucky halfway up his chest. “There’s three different bubble taps,” Bucky said, and Steve was so relieved he laughed.

“Tony is secretly six,” he told Bucky, and set the clothes down on the marble countertop. ( _Marble_. Tony had built all this just to let it go unused?) 

He turned to go. But Bucky said, “Steve,” and Steve stopped, turning back. “Get me some – could you get me some tissues?” 

“Sure.” 

“And a glass of water.” 

“Sure.” 

“The tissues are in the linen closet,” JARVIS informed Steve. 

Steve fetched the tissues and got a mug. The kitchen had granite countertops and a six-burner industrial level stove. The mug, reassuringly, appeared to be a cast-off from a conference. Steve filled it with lukewarm water.

Bucky didn’t say thank you or even look up when Steve made his delivery. But when Steve made to leave, he said, “Steve.”

Again Steve stopped. He counted five, then turned and asked, “You need anything else?”

Bucky scrunched a little lower in the water. The bubbles lapped at the lower rim of his metal shoulder socket, and he shifted and straightened a little. “Could you…?” he said, and he didn’t finish the sentence. 

Then Bucky reached up, water and bubbles dripping off his arm, and cupped the nape of his neck again, like he had in the park. But in the park he had been fully clothed, not naked in a bathtub, and Steve felt anxious and queasy and unpleasantly overheated. 

Bucky dropped his arm back in the water. “Fuck, that’s stupid,” he said. “Go away.” 

“It’s not stupid,” Steve said, and he sat on the edge of the tub and put his hand on the back of Bucky’s neck. His skin was soft under Steve’s fingers, and Steve had the curious light-headed sensation that came from facing a fear and realizing that, after all, there was nothing to be afraid of. Bucky’s skin was just skin, and he wasn’t demanding anything but this light touch. 

Bucky mashed his nose up against his knees. “It’s a little stupid,” he said. Steve worked his fingertips up into Bucky’s hair, pressing his warm palm against the Bucky’s nape. Bucky scrunched his eyes closed. He sniffed. “Steve,” he said. “The tissues?” 

“Yeah,” said Steve, and leaned over to grab them. He just managed to snag one without having to take his hand off Bucky’s shoulder. “Here,” he said, and made to hand it to Bucky. But Bucky’s hand was dripping wet, and Steve hesitated, holding it uncertainly, moving it toward Bucky’s face to hold it to his nose. 

Bucky batted Steve’s arm away. “I can do it myself,” he snapped. He scuffed his hand on the towel hanging over the edge of the bath and snatched the tissue from Steve’s hand. It wilted in his damp fingers, but he blew his nose anyway. Steve rubbed his thumb in the hollow behind Bucky’s ear, where Bucky had liked it before, but Bucky’s shoulders tightened up. “ _Don’t_.” 

Steve stilled his hand. In the quiet, he could hear the water jets running, down in the tub: JARVIS must have decided Bucky’s temperature had modulated enough that he could warm the water up. Bucky relaxed, slowly, drooping forward with his head pillowed against his knees. 

The position exposed his wet back nearly down to his waist, where he disappeared in the bubbles. Steve’s eyes followed the line of his spine. He swallowed, his throat suddenly dry, and lifted his eyes back to Bucky’s head. He moved his hand from Bucky’s neck, just a couple inches down, laying his palm over the spur of bone at the top of Bucky’s spine. 

Bucky sighed and drooped a little more. Steve slid his hand a few inches down Bucky’s wet skin, feeling the knobs of Bucky’s spine under his fingers, his palm. This was almost as relaxed as Steve had ever seen Bucky, and the muscles in his back still felt knotted. Steve wished he knew how to smooth them out.

SHIELD got Steve a massage therapist, after they brought him off the ice. Gina. One of the few good things in his life for a long time, even if he did cry his way through half their sessions. It was utterly mortifying, and Steve repeatedly attempted to cancel so he wouldn’t inflict that on her again, but Gina never seemed to mind. 

She had died in the fall of the Triskelion, when the helicarrier hit the building. Doubtless she had been on Hydra’s death list anyway, but still. 

It occurred to Steve, now, that Hydra had probably listened (probably giggling) to all that weeping on their bugs. The thought sent an icy shock down his spine. Bucky sighed, and the sound brought Steve back to the present. 

His gaze caught on the seam where the metal arm socket met the skin. It mantled his shoulder and reached down over most of his left shoulder blade, and the skin around it looked hard and white. The first stage of frostbite. 

“Bucky,” said Steve, and moved his hand to touch it. “Is your shoulder…?”

But his fingers barely brushed the discolored skin before Bucky draw away sharply, his knees knocking against the side of the bathtub in his haste to scoot away. “Don’t!” 

Steve at once drew his hand away. He expected Bucky to shout at him, get out get out get _out_ ; but Bucky calmed down again, his shoulders relaxing – or, at least, lowering back into their usual tense state. 

“It’ll be fine,” Bucky said. He had his face pressed against his knees again. “It just gets like that when it’s cold.”

No wonder Bucky hated the cold. His own damn arm gave him frostbite. “I never knew…” said Steve, thinking of stakeouts in the cold rain, hiking across the countryside for days and days in the cold, his own exasperation when Bucky complained. 

“Why should you?”

“So I could help.” 

Bucky shook his head without lifting it from his knees. “It’s a flaw in the design,” he said. “There’s nothing you could do.” 

“We could talk to Tony about it,” Steve said. “He could design a heating system, maybe. Or a new arm. Carbon fiber – ”

“No!” Bucky sounded panicked. 

“Or not,” Steve said. “Not if you don’t want to.”

Bucky reached out, as if to push him off the edge of the tub. He pulled his arm back before he touched Steve, but Steve took the hint and slid off the rim of the bathtub to sit on the floor. The bathtub was so high that Steve could only see the top of Bucky’s head, hunched over on his knees. 

Steve could hear the water swishing in the tub. A light mist of steam drifted through the room – not rising from the water, but drifting down from the walls. It smelled of something gentle and soothing, and Steve wondered if JARVIS could read the mood of the room well enough to know that they needed soothing. 

“You warming up okay?” Steve asked Bucky. 

“Yeah.” Bucky straightened up. His face became visible over the edge of the tub, and he tossed another handful of bubbles at Steve. Steve batted them out of the air and smiled. 

The slate tiles were warm from some under-floor heating system. This had to be costing a fortune, and it made him uneasy thinking of it. 

Bucky broke the silence. “I could get him a present.” 

Steve blinked. “Huh?”

Bucky was leaning over the edge of the tub, looking at him. “Mack.” 

“Oh. To go with your apology?”

Bucky rested his chin on the edge of the tub. He frowned. 

“Instead of an apology,” Steve concluded. “Bucky. It’d be better to say you’re sorry. Tell him you won’t do it again.” 

Bucky bristled. “Because you know so much about how to make people like you, Mr. Standoffish.” 

“I’m not standoffish,” Steve protested.

“Are too,” said Bucky. He flung another handful of bubbles at Steve. It wasn’t playful this time. “You only helped the one time with the snow fort.” 

“I don’t – ” Steve began, and stopped himself when he realized that the rest of the sentence was _I don’t want to get close to them in case they turn out to be evil like my STRIKE team_. “Well, fine. Maybe I’m a little standoffish.” 

He expected Bucky to be pleased, but suddenly Bucky ducked his head. “I can’t tell him I won’t do it again,” he said. “I didn’t – ” His voice caught. “Didn’t mean to do it the first time.” 

“He knows you didn’t mean to,” Steve said. “He was worried you would feel bad about it. I’m sure he’d accept an apology. Hell, he’d probably know you meant the present as an apology.”

He expected that to calm Bucky down, but Bucky pressed his face against his knees again. “Bucky, really, it’s okay,” Steve said. He knelt by the tub, putting his hand back on the nape of Bucky’s neck. 

Bucky gasped at the contact. “ _Don’t_ ,” he snarled. Steve moved his hand away at once. 

They sat in silence for a while. The water jets hissed in the bathtub. Finally Bucky lifted his head. “I _hate_ this,” he said.

“I know.” 

A deep shaky sigh. JARVIS unleashed a stream of purplish bubbles that floated above the water. Bucky giggled wetly and wiped his nose with the back of his hand. “I can’t get a hold of myself,” he said. “I’ve been trying all day and I can’t…” His eyes filled briefly with tears.

“It’s okay.”

The tears disappeared. “Stop fucking telling me it’s okay!” Bucky yelled. “It’s _not_ okay. This is not what okay feels like!” 

“I’m sorry,” Steve said quietly, and tried to think of anything else to say. But nothing seemed quite right. Bucky had ducked his head so low that Steve couldn’t even see him anymore over the high bathtub side. 

“He told me they nuked Moscow and Leningrad,” Bucky blurted, and Steve was stupefied for a moment before he realized that Bucky had reverted back to a much earlier conversation. 

“Sasha told you?” Steve said, just to make sure. 

“I dunno why he bothered. He already had me down.”

“Oh, Bucky – ” 

“I think he was bitter I killed most of his team,” Bucky mused. “If I hadn’t been still weak from cryo…” 

His voice trailed off. Steve waited, but Bucky didn’t resume the sentence. Another stream of purple bubbles floated down, and Bucky caught on in his hand and held it lightly. “He told me,” he said, and stopped. “While I was with Hydra. I asked about my memory, you know, what was wrong with me, because I did know that everyone else could remember things. He always said – if I needed anything explained – I should ask him – ” The bubble popped. Bucky let his hand fall back in the water. “And Sasha said it was a mission injury, and – he didn’t say this, exactly, it was like he was trying to be tactful – it happened because I did something fucking stupid; I’d sworn to serve him, and then I’d gone and broken myself, and he had saved me. As this – shell, I think was the word he used. He – ”

Bucky stopped suddenly. Steve put his hand on Bucky’s nape again, and this time Bucky didn’t pull away. Steve could see Bucky’s throat bob as he swallowed, trying to start talking again. 

“Pardon me,” said JARVIS, and Steve jumped and Bucky went quite still. “But Agent Coulson most insistently wishes to see you.” 

“Tell him to go away,” snapped Steve.

“I’m afraid he’s overridden my protocols, sir.” 

“Shit,” Bucky said. “Steve, can you – ”

His eyes went past Steve suddenly, and he ducked beneath the water. Steve turned, looking; and there was Coulson, in the bathroom door. “Here you are,” he said, and he crossed the slate tiles, flipped the lid down on the toilet seat, and sat down as comfortably as if he held meetings in bathrooms all the time. 

“Coulson,” said Steve. “How about you go wait in the kitchen? We can meet there. Have some coffee. If we can figure out how to work Tony’s coffee machine.” He tried a self-deprecating smile – _see how charmingly incompetent I am with modern technology?_ – and hoped he looked less furious than he felt. 

“I’m fine here,” said Coulson. 

Bucky rose out of the water. He pushed himself into the corner of the bathtub, his arms flung out the bathtub rim, chest exposed to halfway down the ribs. The soap had given his metal arm an iridescent sheen, and that brief immersion seemed to have washed away his fragile reflective mood. He gave Coulson a murderous glare. 

“We could have done this in my office this morning, like civilized people,” Coulson told him. “If you hadn’t run away.” 

“You would’ve canceled my leave.” 

Coulson leaned forward, his clasped hands hanging loosely between his knees. “You don’t think that would have been fair? After you slammed Mack against the wall?” 

“No.” Truculent.

“Coulson,” Steve started, leaning forward too, mirroring Coulson’s posture. 

But Bucky made a sudden quick arm movement that spattered Steve with bubbles. “Steve already yelled at me about it,” Bucky snapped. Steve stared at him. “He’s always – always on your side.” 

Bucky choked up as he spoke, and even though Steve knew that Bucky was lying through his teeth about the yelling – and surely he wouldn’t lie to Coulson right in front of Steve if he didn’t think Steve was on his side to back him up? – he felt his own throat closing up too. 

“There aren’t sides,” said Coulson, his voice unruffled. “We’re all SHIELD agents.”

Bucky glared. “Well, tell your SHIELD agents not to hit me, and I won’t hit them.”

“It was an accident,” Coulson said patiently. 

“Well, so. Pinning Mack against the wall was an _accident_ too,” Bucky sneered, and Steve wanted to shake him. It was probably true, more or less: Bucky hadn’t meant to do it; he had lost control. But framing it like that meant Coulson would never believe it. 

Coulson leaned forward, laying a hand on the bathtub. “You promised me,” he said, his voice quiet but emphatic, “that you were going to do better.” 

Bucky sagged. His shoulders hunched. “I am – I’m trying. I _am_ trying.” 

“This is the third time in three months,” Coulson pressed. “Who’s next? How badly do you think it would hurt Simmons if you slammed her up against the wall like that? She’s not combat-trained.”

“I wou – ” Bucky cut himself off halfway through _wouldn’t_. His eyes were glazing over. 

“ _Coulson_ ,” said Steve. 

He intended to tell Coulson to lay off. But Bucky’s gaze sharpened and focused on Steve. “Go away.” 

“Coulson – ” Steve started again.

“Go _away_!” Bucky yelled, and if he hadn’t been pinned in the bathtub by his own nakedness, Steve thought he would have ejected Steve bodily from the room. “I don’t want you here,” he said, and his cheeks flushed as he said it, and Steve went hot and cold and thought, _He doesn’t want to be humiliated in front of me_ ; and Steve grabbed Coulson by the arm and hauled him right out of the bathroom, and dragged him all the way to the kitchen. 

“What the hell was that?” Steve yelled. 

“Let go of my arm, Captain Rogers,” said Coulson. 

Steve tightened his grip. “What the _hell_ was that?” 

“That was me trying to protect my team from a volatile supersoldier,” said Coulson, and Steve became suddenly painfully aware that he was towering over Coulson, all but shouting in his face – and he was suddenly, painfully aware of every inch of height advantage he had over Coulson. His grip on Coulson’s arm was so tight bruises would probably be finger-shaped. 

Steve let go and stepped away. “I’m sorry,” he said. “I – yes, we need to get some control on his behavior, I agree. But you didn’t have to – what the hell, Coulson! Who barges in on someone while they’re taking a bath, who _does_ that? What the hell did you think you were going to get out of it?”

“I want him to take the situation seriously,” said Coulson. 

“He already does,” Steve said. “Honestly, Coulson, he does feel bad.”

Coulson did not quite restrain an eye roll. Steve wanted to shake him, but he couldn’t blame Coulson for not believing: not after Bucky’s show of sulky non-repentance. Instead Steve said, “I know you think I’m hopelessly optimistic about Bucky – ”

“Delusional, Captain Rogers.” 

That dried up everything Steve had been meaning to say. He struggled to remember it, to explain; but what was the point? If Coulson thought he was delusional about Bucky, he wasn’t going to listen anyway. 

“What did you tell him you’d do to him if he didn’t keep his promise?” Steve asked instead. 

“ _Do_ to him?” Coulson echoed, eyebrows quirked, and Steve realized how sinister that sounded. How paranoid. 

“I just meant – you must have said there’d be consequences.” 

“I said we’d send him to the Playground for more extensive psychiatric treatment,” Coulson said. 

Steve felt dizzy. The Playground was SHIELD headquarters. “Coulson,” he said. “I know you don’t believe me, but he really is doing so much better than he was. Sending him away – ” Bucky would retreat behind his sociopathic mask and never come out. Steve felt sick at the thought. “And your agents like him, Coulson, even if he is – unpredictable. And how are you going to fight Hydra’s supersoldiers without any supersoldiers of your own?” 

“We would still have you,” Coulson said, unperturbed. 

“I’m not staying with you,” Steve replied, “if you send him away.” 

They looked at each other, Steve bristling and Coulson mild. “I’m not sending him anywhere, Captain Rogers,” Coulson said. “We need both of you with us. And he hasn’t really hurt anyone – yet.” 

Bucky made his entrance to the kitchen not long after, though Steve strongly suspected he’d been listening from the hallway for a while. He was dry and dressed, all the way down to his combat boots. He had broken another bootlace. “I guess we’re going back to the Bus?” Bucky said. 

“Yes,” said Coulson. 

“Let’s stop and get cronuts on the way,” Bucky said. His voice was disturbingly buoyant.

“No,” said Coulson. “They must be sold out for today anyway.” 

“Or cupcakes. Cupcakes are quick.” 

“My _God_ ,” said Coulson, and he sounded, just for an instant, exasperated. “No. We’re parked on the roof. Come on.” 

***

The Bus was in the air by nightfall. Bucky retreated to his cabin, and Steve spent the evening helping Coulson’s agents decipher the faded spidery handwriting on the old bank records they had come to New York to steal. 

Steve didn’t quite understand how they planned to use these papers to find hidden Hydra properties, and after an hour or so he managed to beg off on the grounds of a massive tension headache. “So super-muscles have a downside?” said Skye. 

“Doesn’t everything?” Steve retorted. 

When he got back to his cabin he could hear Bucky’s music playing softly. “Moonlight Serenade”: the Glenn Miller instrumental version. It was a good song for flying through the night, and it made Steve smile. He remembered dancing to this song on one of the few successful (well, successfulish) double dates that Bucky arranged. Steve couldn’t remember the girl’s name now – Ingrid? Ignacia? – but she liked to draw, and they talked about that. 

Naturally she came from Hoboken and was only in town for a couple weeks to visit her cousin Eileen, Bucky’s almost-fiancée, so nothing came of it. (And then Eileen broke up with Bucky and ran away with a traveling salesman, and Bucky was crushed. If only his problems were like that now.)

The song ended. Another began, and then stopped, and there was a pause; and then “Moonlight Serenade” began to play again. 

Steve left his door open and sat down on the bed, listening. When the song came to an end Bucky skipped back to play it again. And again. 

After the fifth repetition began, Steve went down the hall to Bucky’s cabin. Bucky lay on his bed, his arms behind his head, and when Steve appeared in his doorway his face shifted into a scowl. “Too loud?” he asked, in a tone that said _What are you gonna do about it?_

Steve shook his head. “Can I come in and listen for a while?” 

The scowl faded. “I guess.”

Steve didn’t want to crowd Bucky on the bed, so he lay on the floor. This time, Bucky let “Moonlight Serenade” pass on, and they listened to “Chattanooga Choo Choo” and “I’ve Got a Gal in Kalamazoo.” 

It reminded him a little of Brooklyn, lying on the floor straining to hear music on the battered radio that Bucky had rescued from the curb and repaired. Although Bucky rarely lay still and listened back then: he always wanted to be up and dancing. Dragged Steve to his feet and danced him around the apartment till Steve laughed and coughed and begged off, blaming his asthma but usually trying to hide his growing arousal. Bucky only lay around and listened to the same song over and over when he was sad.

For the past two years, Bucky had vacillated between angry and cheerful and viciously gleeful. If he felt sad, he rarely showed it. 

“What did you promise Coulson?” Steve asked. 

The bedclothes rustled, like Bucky was shifting to look down at Steve. Steve didn’t look up. “Just what he said,” Bucky said.

“That you would do better? That’s not very specific.” 

Bucky didn’t reply. 

Steve wanted to press for more details, but that was liable to provoke an explosion. Instead he asked, “When was this?” 

There was a long pause. “After I went to Shenandoah.” 

When he ran away near the end of his suspension, then. “When he put you back in that cell.” 

Bucky’s arm cast a shadow over Steve’s face as he reached over to turn up the music, loud enough that they would have had to shout to be heard over it. Steve fell silent and closed his eyes, listening. It was odd to hear Big Band music played that way, but soothing, somehow, at the same time: it blocked out the rest of the world.

A knock on the open door brought Steve out of his doze. Mack leaned against the doorway. Bucky sat up, bristling, but Mack just leaned and smiled and said, half-shouting to be heard above the music, “You want to play Mario Kart?” 

A pause. Bucky turned down the music, although he didn’t turn it off. 

“’Fraid Fitz already called Princess Peach,” Mack added. 

Bucky ducked his head so his hair hid his face.

“Skye’s mixing up sangria. You’ve gotta grab a controller before she finishes, or she’ll wipe the floor with all of us. And you know what a sore winner she is.”

“I – ” Bucky turned off the music. “Sorry about. You know.” 

“I know,” said Mack. “Now come on. Simmons went to this cupcake place in Williamsburg and got beer batter maple bacon cupcakes. You know you want to try one. Or three.”

Bucky didn’t reply. “Beer batter maple bacon? Is that even a cupcake?” Steve asked, mostly to give Bucky some time to collect his thoughts. 

Mack looked a little surprised that he’d spoken. “Guess you’d better have one and see,” Mack said. “Maybe even play some Mario Kart with us.” 

“I’m terrible at videogames,” Steve protested, and thought of Bucky’s description earlier: _Mr. Standoffish_.

“So? You’ll never get better if you don’t practice,” said Mack. 

Bucky swung his legs off the bed and gave Steve a little nudge in the ribs with his foot. “Come on,” he said. “You’ve got to give everyone else a chance to kick your ass at _something_.” 

“Well,” said Steve. “All right.”


End file.
